The undersigned having listened to your discourse delivered
on Sunday evening, April 23, in commemoration of the assassination of
the late President of the United States, and deeming the moral and
religious lessons it inculcates, as well as its tribute to the memory
of one occupying so important a position, to be especially instructive
and timely, respectfully request a copy of the same for
publication.

GENTLEMEN: I duly appreciate the honor done me by your
request. The sermon was prepared and preached with a view to
usefulness. If in your judgment that end will be promoted by the issue
of the discourse in printed form, it is with gratitude and hope
committed to your care.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the
Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled
the temple.--ISSIAH vi, 1.

WHEN a little babe dies, all fathers and mothers weep with
the sorrowing parents, and press their own dear lambs nearer their
throbbing, loving hearts; for they know how frail the tie is that
binds them to the pledges of their mutual love.

When parents die, the children of their neighbors cling
more closely to their parents, and are in deepest sympathy with those
who are so sorely bereft; for they realize that ere long it may be
their bitter lot to drink of the sorrowful cup of orphanage.

If a faithful pastor falls from his sacred relation into
the silent tomb, every church feels admonished that he whom they obey
and revere in the gospel may be called from their service to go up
higher.

When the Executive head of a great nation falls, all
nations become mourners; for they know that the ruler they look to, to
carry them on in improvements and give them desirable perpetuity and
stability upon the earth, is also a man, and must ere long die, and
may be called to his dread account in a moment least expected, and
when they seemed most to need his guiding hand in the affairs which so
vitally concern their common and individual good.

We, as a people, wept with weeping Britannia, when the good
husband of their beloved queen passed from

time and Windsor Castle to the shade and solitude of the silent
tomb. I am sorrowingly mistaken in my estimate of Christian Europe,
among whose people I spent a few months of my life, if they all, and
England especially, do not join in heart-felt grief with us in our
funeral solemnities around the bier of him whom our whole nation
mourns, and in respect to whom and the high office he filled so well,
we devote the last hours of this sacred day in devoutest religious
services.

The lesson of this hour is--God seen above
all national calamities.

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the
temple."

I. Rulers die. They must die, for they are mortal as other
men are mortal. With you and I, beloved, they must meet the messenger
from the tombs, and there come to a halt in his cold embrace.

"Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers;
The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
Must lie as low as ours."

"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the
judgment." We must each of us, rulers and people, say, "Thou, Lord,
wilt bring me to the grave; it is the house appointed for all living."
He in whose hand our breath is hath said, "Dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt thou return." This decree was pronounced by lips that
cannot dissemble, at the gates of Eden; it has never been altered, nor
has it failed of verification in all the ages of our human history,
except in the instances of Enoch and Elijah.

The fathers of our Federal Union, where are they? And the
signers of our glorious Declaration of Independence, do they live for
ever? In various States of our

great Republic they ended their illustrious mission, and died;
reverent friends buried them out of their sight.

The brave legions of our glorious Revolution, were they
invincible to the conqueror of all human conquerors? Did those of them
who escaped the missiles of their enemies or survived the dying
decreed against them by their brutal enemies in loathsome jails and
prison ships, are they not all gone? Except a corporal's guard--all,
all, with their illustrious Washington at their head, have obeyed the
divine roll-call and gone up on high, and only a few of their
sepulchres are known to us of this day. Mount Vernon is yet sacred,
and may be regarded as not only the entombing place of our first and
greatest national chief, but as an enshrinement in hallowed memories
of all who under him fought and bled in vindication of freedom's holy
cause.

Of the sixteen men who have hitherto filled the Executive
chair of our nation, three only survive. May Jehovah have ever in his
safe keeping the life, the intellect, the heart and soul of him who
now sits there, burdened with a nation's responsibilities, and almost
overwhelmed in sympathy with the people in this their great peculiar
grief, as in a recent personal interview I have reason to know.

The sixteenth and late Chief Magistrate of our Union has
but just left us; his call hence was so sudden, so unlooked for, so
deeply to be deprecated, especially "in the deep damnation of his
taking off," that we are scarcely as yet awake to the consciousness
that we shall see his manly form towering among us no more, nor greet
his kindly countenance, or feel the warm clasp of his ready hand ever
again. Abraham Lincoln is dead--as we speak of death; his
ever-laboring brain was pierced by a bullet, shot from a pistol by the
hand of a drunken, debased assassin, April 14,1865. Though the wound
was mortal, he did not die, thank Heaven! amid the unhallowed
surroundings where he received it. Kind arms bore him to a Chris-

tian home, there to terminate his memorable and useful life. His
breath and spirit went out of its clay tabernacle into the presence of
his God and Judge from the house of a worthy family, belonging to the
Lutheran Church, of which the Rev. Dr. Finckel is Pastor, in a room
sacred to them, as from it, a few months since, went two cherub
children to the bosom of the good Shepherd above. I thank God that he,
whom we all revered, did not die in a place of questionable utility--a
place I never was in, and where I entreat my hearers never to go. He
died in a religious home, his friends and Pastor around him--the most
sacred place this side of heaven. May it be ours to die amid such holy
surroundings as ever cluster where Christian families reside. I know I
speak for you all when I say--

When I die, as die I must,
And my worn body seeks
repose,
At home with those in Christ who trust,
I'd
yield to death, my last of foes.

For there 'tis given the good to die,
And there will
guardian Angels come,
Heralds of grand eternity,
The
ransomed sinner's joyful home.

The knell of death has sounded; it sounded first from the
steeple of this Church; the authorities of the nation have paid
funeral honors to him they officially surrounded, prudently
counselled, loved, and respected. The electric throb has sent the
thrilling sensation to the extremes of our country, and swift winged
ships are bearing it to all peoples who live beyond the seas. The
lofty form that so recently bowed to welcome the humblest citizen to
the nation's mansion has been shrouded and coffined, and committed to
careful hands, to be borne to their home on the prairies, where in
less exalted position he was not less loved than here.

Men of God, in presence of our newly inaugurated Chief
Magistrate, have given Christian counsel to the living--

comforting words to the widow and fatherless children; all has been
done that a grateful community could do, to respectfully consign the
casket, from whence the jewel had departed, to the keeping of the
earth from whence it came, and from whence it will rise again at the
last day. What remains to us now is to so improve this solemn
Providence as that we may be benefitted by its having occurred. Each
of us will be held accountable to the bar of the Lord Jesus, our only
Saviour and final Judge, for the use we make of the lesson so solemnly
and impressively taught us in this terrible and unlooked-for
catastrophe.

Can we better do at this period in our life, and in the
life of a lacerated nation, than to say, "Lord, so teach us to number
our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom?" Does not divine
wisdom teach us in our text, that "God is seen amidst
and above all national calamities?"

Secondly. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the
Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the
temple."

So let us, my brethren, now that our honored President has
died, "see also the Lord on high," His train in gracefulness and glory
filling the temples of our land, and the hallowed place where we now
worship.

I. We have need to see the Lord now on high, because we
have been too grovelling and sensual in our thoughts and ways
heretofore. When victory perched on our national banners, when armed
rebels fled before our vindicators and defenders, we did not as we
should give God the glory that was due unto His holy name. We
rejoiced, as well we might; but instead of devout gratitude to him who
enabled us to triumph, there was the sound of licentious revelry and
noisy coarseness in our joy. Loosed for a season from the toils of
routine life, many rushed madly

to the intoxicating cup for stimulus to artificial excitement, and
drowned all seasonable delight in mire, and a poison that not the dumb
animals will swallow. We heard men say, when Richmond had fallen, they
would get drunk then, if never again.

Oh! my beloved, such things ought not so to be among us--a
people educated to rational freedom, nurtured on the warm bosoms of
Christian mothers, and having access to the word of God as a ritual
with which to chant our ecstacies, and surrounded with open churches
wherein to pay our vows and declare our thanksgivings.

II. We should see the Lord above all national calamities,
that so we might place our confidence for future success in a certain
help in time of trouble.

I have seen men high in civil and military positions
resorting to exhibitions of frivolous if not immoral tendencies in
this and other cities, when their sons, brethren, and fellow-citizens
in arms were bareing their bosoms to the storms of death, and
weltering in dying gore upon battlefields, so near that we could hear
the roar of cannon that was tearing them to pieces. I have trembled
for my sons, and the sons of others, exposed on the ball-ploughed
fields, and have, wondering, asked if my God, who is just, as well as
merciful, would give success to a people so forgetful of the
solemnities and even proprieties of a time so momentous as this
was. Ambulances loaded with brave mangled men have rumbled through our
streets past scenes of revelry and crime which we would suppose fiends
only could delight in, amid associations so solemn and anxious as were
transpiring near us.

That we may be chastened and have proper sympathy with
those who peril all for our common good, we must see the Lord sitting
upon a throne, high and lifted up, and to Him we all must look when
death is at his carnival, and union and freedom are the prey he is
voraciously seeking to devour.

III. We have depended too entirely on man when we have been
in dread of our enemies. In triumph we gave too much glory to man, and
not enough to God. He assures us He will not give His glory to
another. He is a jealous God. While I yield to no man in intelligent
admiration of the unsullied integrity, uncorrupted honesty, lofty aims
of philanthropy, and pure patriotism of our lamented President, I do
most fearfully believe he was sometimes put between us and HIM who
alone could help us. Not by his desire to be so exalted; he was too
humble and reliant on divine aid himself ever to admit of such an
emotion; but we were prone to forget the hole of the pit from whence
we were digged, and the rock from whence we were hewn, and said man
had done what Omnipotence alone could do.

I fear, my brethren, that when our heavenly Father saw that
his goodness did not deter us from putting our trust in princes, nor
from resting too entirely on an arm of flesh, he permitted a reckless
wretch to assassinate our good President, and cowardly steal into the
home of our chief of cabinet, and with bloody hands complement and
companion that act, at least in extent, and even beyond in diabolical
intentions of butchery, and so commit the deed that has disgraced the
name of civilization.

Cain is exceeded in this wickedness, and a worse than
Cain's mark is set upon the villain's murderous brow. Go where these
murderers may, these human fiends will find, even in savage wilds or
African deserts, Satan also going with them, tormenting them before
the time. No civilized people will give them asylum. They must go,
driven by the fiery furies which their well-served but cruel master of
the pit will send to hound them on their track, with no rest for the
soles of their feet in all the realms of existence, and as they cannot
escape the just judgments of God we dare not speak of their terrible
hereafter. In life they cannot escape that worse than hell into which
tiger

passions have engulfed them; and ever as consciousness lights up its
glare in their gloom, each must exclaim, "Myself am hell, and hell
itself were tolerable if it could but hide me from myself." Every
night-wind they breathe will howlingly echo from their blistered
throat and lips the terrific exclamation, true as it is wild and
despairing, "My punishment is greater than I can bear." Except
repentance ensue and marvellous mercy interpose, each must be as a
tree set on fire by lightning, kindled and blasted, "his life one long
war with self-sought foes."

IV. Finally, God must be seen above all national
calamities, in order that we may have Him to go to in time of
trouble. "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life," was an apostolical exclamation in an hour of need and trial.

Our late President Lincoln is dead. Andrew Johnson is now
our President. "The powers that be are ordained of God," and we are to
respect, obey, and pray for all who bear rule over us. Christians are
to be loyal to both God and man.

"A foe to God was ne'er true friend to
man."

It is our first duty to look up to Him who is on the throne of the
universe, for direction and help in discharging our duties growing out
of the death that has bereaved us, and the mercy that gives us one so
able to succeed him.

Are we afflicted? then let us pray. Our Saviour, "being in
an agony, prayed more earnestly." Prayer is the result, the pledge,
the solace, the right use of affliction. The deeper the anguish that
rives our hearts, the greater the necessity for the rest and support
we may find at the throne of the heavenly grace, "on which the Lord
sits high and lifted up." In the greatness of our personal and
national grief, let us not, like our shamed ancestors in Eden, flee
away and hide ourselves from God, but pray. Let us not,

like Cain, try to dissipate our consciousness of need by building and
being absorbed in worldly objects, but let us come before the Lord in
penitent, beseeching prayer. Let us not, like Jonah, be fretful and
angry because of the withering of our earthly gourds, but let us give
ourselves unto the seeking prosperity of Him who is ever on the
throne, and whose train of mercies fills the temples.

"When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wounds,
then went Ephraim to the Assyrian and sent to King Joreb; yet would
not he heal them nor cure them of their wounds." Not so will we; but
in the sickness of our souls, and the wounds of our people, we will to
Him, who alone can cure. Not like Saul shall we repair to carousing
and dissipation, to drown our sorrows or wash away the remembrance of
our guiltiness, but pray, "Lord, help I for the godly man ceaseth, and
the faithful fail from among the children of men." We must not, like
Ahitophel and Judas, suicidally plunge ourselves into hell for relief
from the ills that whelm us here, but say to one another, "Come and
let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn, and He will heal us; he
hath smitten, and He will bind us up." Though the heavens are brass
over our heads, and the earth iron under our feet, and we hear the
roaring of His vindictive thunder and are terrified at the shaking of
his avenging spear, whom we have most justly offended, and are afraid
at His tokens,--yet with the patient patriarch we will say, "Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

Let each of us set a Christian example before the world,
the best that we can do in our lot and station, resolving to
contribute the life and heart of one patriot and Christian to the good
of our wounded country, and a needy world.

Doing this, we may confidently hope to finish our course
with triumphant joy, and go into the possession of a glorious eternal
hereafter. With the consecration of the noblest purposes in our
hearts, and full trust in the merits of Jesus Christ underlying all
our prospects, if we must

needs be occasionally cast down, we shall not be destroyed. In our
personal and national trials we shall see the Lord on the throne, high
and lifted up, and His train filling the temple, and we singing
responsive to the heavenly host.

"I seem forsaken and alone,
I hear the lions roar,
And every door is shut but one,
And that is mercy's
door.

"There till the dear Deliverer come
I'll wait with
humble prayer,
And when he calls his exiles home
The Lord shall find me
there."

Let us Pray.

Our Father and God, we now pray unto Thee in words Thou
didst hear from the lips of our beloved Washington, saying:

"May thy Providence, which has so long appeared to be on
our behalf so manifestly, interpose and help us through all this
struggle, and direct us to the measures to be used and pursued to
bring about the happy event all lovers of Thee and of mankind so
ardently desire!" "Mayest Thou who art powerful to save, in whose
hands is the fate of nations, look down with an eye of tender pity and
compassion upon the whole of these United States, continue to smile
upon our councils and arms, and crown them with success, whilst
employed in the cause of virtue and mankind."

We humbly beseech Thee, O most merciful Lord God! that this
distressed country, and its capital, and every part of this
wide-extended continent, through Thy divine favor, may be restored to
more than their former lustre and once happy state. May we have peace,
liberty, and safety, secured upon a solid, impartial, and permanent
foundation.

restored to all sick and wounded, comfort ministered to all who mourn!
The fatherless and the widow do Thou take into the covenant-keeping of
Thy everlasting arms. May we all, with hearty repentance and sincere
faith, turn away from our sins unto Thee, O Lord!

We do most humbly and heartily beseech Thee to bless Thy
servant the President of these United States, his cabinet and
counsellors, members of our Senate and Congress, with all others in
authority; endow them plenteously with Thy grace and wisdom, that so
being replenished, they may do good while they live, and come at last
to the enjoyment of eternal felicity in presence of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit; to whom be glory and dominion world without
end. Amen.